Arabica coffee futures finished lower on Friday, continuing to fall from Wednesday's 34-year high and marking their biggest two-day decline in nearly seven months.
U.S. cocoa settled down for the fourth straight day as the softs complex saw follow-through profit-taking and felt spillover pressure from a commodity complex that dropped following Japan's biggest earthquake on record.
COFFEE
* May arabica coffee futures tumbled 6.15 cents, or 2.2 percent, to close at $2.7440 per lb.
* May closed the week up 0.6 percent.
* Profit-taking combined with a lack of roaster buying allowed the market to extend Thursday's steep losses - traders.
* Pressure from the larger commodity markets, which fell after the world's third-biggest economy Japan was hit by a major earthquake and tsunami, gave more steam to the downward momentum - traders.
* Tight supplies remained, however, and continued to underpin the market - traders.
* A potentially devastating storm is brewing in the world's physical coffee market, where a double whammy is hitting the companies that get beans from the farm gate to the cafe table.
COCOA
* Benchmark May cocoa futures dropped $33 to settle at $3,412 per tonne, closing the week down 6.7 percent.
* May closed at a $28 premium to July , narrowing from $34 the previous session.
* Market fell on follow-through weakness and pressure from the commodity complex that dropped in reaction to the major earthquake and tsunami in Japan - dealers.
* Cocoa beans are piling up in east Ivory Coast because of an embargo, while plummeting farmgate prices have pushed planters to abandon farms as Ghana reinforced security at its border to end smuggling - farmers.
* Senegal's leader, Abdoulaye Wade, said Ivory Coast was "entering a phase of war" after the latest attempt by the African Union to resolve a power struggle by diplomacy failed.******
